Convicted man says confession coerced

July 21, 2009

A man serving a life sentence for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault is mounting a new fight to prove his innocence, insisting a confession he gave to police was false and came after he was tortured by a notorious police unit, his legal team said today.

Michael Tillman, now 43, was convicted in 1986 in the murder and rape of 42-year-old mail clerk Betty Howard. However, Tillman's legal team said the main piece of evidence against him -- his confession -- came following a violent interrogation by a team of detectives working under disgraced former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

"It doesn't get any uglier than this case," said Locke Bowman of Northwestern University's MacArthur Justice Center, one of Tillman's lawyers. "You have here a guy who has spent 23 years in prison because he was tortured into confessing something that he didn't do."

In a petition his lawyers filed Tuesday with the court, Tillman said detectives under Burge's command in the infamous "Midnight Crew" put a gun to his head, punched him in the stomach until he vomited, hit him with a telephone book and held a plastic bag over his head. The detectives also forced his head back as they poured 7-Up into his nose--a crude form of waterboarding, his lawyers alleged. Eventually, Tillman confessed.

But when Tillman raised the torture allegations before his first trial, the judge refused to throw out his confession and later convicted Tillman of the murder in 1986.

In appealing the conviction, Tillman's lawyers did not raise the torture allegations, but the state appellate court overturned the conviction because of ineffective assistance of counsel. Tillman was convicted by a jury in a retrial and resentenced to life in prison

"There's not any other credible evidence" against Tillman other than the confession, said G. Flint Taylor, another of Tillman's lawyers. "We feel for the Howard family ... When the wrong people are convicted, that doesn't serve the interests of justice or the families who suffered from the loss."